Public meeting 4th September round up

We had another great turn out for our public meeting held in the Council Chamber at the Bromley Civic Centre last week. Peter Martin, Chairman of BACI, presented on the latest developments and we took a lot of questions and opinions from the floor. It was a lively meeting with some great feedback and lots to take away and action! Thanks to everyone who attended. Below is the presentation and underneath that is a quick round up of the key points discussed. As always please don't hesitate to get in touch with any thoughts and ideas, any offers of help also always greatly received! 

Amanda Hone, BACI Secretary (amanda.c.hone@gmail.com)

Next open meeting - 4th of September!

We are holding another open meeting for all you lovely Bromley people on the 4th of September at 7pm in the Council Chamber at Bromley Civic Centre, so do come along to find out more and hear the latest developments on the project. We have made a lot of headway in recent months, including formally constituting as a community group and fostering the support of the council (including MP Bob Neill, pictured with us on the left), as well as holding further talks with the agents of British Land Corporation and Spirit Group (the land and lease holders).

We continue with our efforts to save the Royal Bell and we want to see as many interested people at the meeting as possible, there was a fantastic turnout for the last meeting in the library and we hope this time there will be even more people to share news with. Please do help us spread the word and don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to, my email is amanda.c.hone@gmail.com.

We're a formally constituted community group!

For the past 9 months we have been holding meetings, rallying support, liaising with huge organisations and working hard to devise the best ways to save the Royal Bell from a fate of rotting away slowly in the town centre. In order to get formal recognition though we needed to get a proper constitution written and go through the channels that allow us to access funds and have an official status. We were fortunate enough to be joined at our inaugural meeting in the Barrel and Horn pub by a band of great supporters; John Street, Alan Hughes, Nigel Moriss, Jo Hone and Geraldine Rolfe, as well as me (Amanda Hone and Peter Martin) last week where minutes were taken (by John, very much appreciated) and committee members elected. It was a great meeting with all of us really excited about ways we can move forward with the project.

We are very happy to be able to recruit a treasurer, Geraldine Rolfe, with whom we made a trip to the bank this morning to open a bank account. It might not sound that exciting but for us it's a really significant step as this will allow us to apply for funds so we can get advice and hire professionals to help with this complex project in the future.

We have some important meetings lined up in the next few weeks with people we hope we can work together with to breath some much needed life back into the Royal Bell.

More updates as they happen, but in the mean time thanks for reading and for your continued support :)

A proposal

BACI's Chairman and ex-planner at Bromley Council, Peter Martin has put together a proposal which we will be presenting to Councillors and also to British Land Corporation (the owners of the Royal Bell). We will still go ahead with starting the ball rolling on this avenue as nothing is guaranteed with Antic. If they didn't get the pub the building still needs a way out of its gridlocked situation which allows it to continue rotting in the centre of Bromley.

So here is it, enjoy :) ....

Thanks again News Shoppper :)

The News Shopper ran another piece this week on the news that the pub company Antic are trying to procure the lease for the Royal Bell. We fully support this bid and would love to work with the pub company who have over 40 great pubs all around London, if their bid was successful. There is a fantastic Heritage Lottery Fund which has just opened for applications called the Heritage Enterprise Grant and is aimed completely at projects and community groups like ours. Take a look at the information here (and definitely watch the little video at the end of the page). We would so love to be able to utilise this fantastic fund for preserving and celebrating our own piece of Bromley heritage. Fingers crossed everyone please!

Antic Pubs make a bid for the Royal Bell

Last week I got news that Antic Pubs had put in a bid for the Royal Bell. This means (as far as I can work out!) that they have bid for the sub lease of the property from the current leaseholders Spirit Group. Things move slowly but we are told that negotiations are underway and there is hope they will procure the sub lease soon. As with every other deal though this might fall through and despite being a great pub company who have a reputation for restoring and breathing life back into old pubs there might just be too many problems with taking on the delapidated Royal Bell.

I will keep you all posted here and on the Facebook page so keep your fingers crossed that it goes through. We'd love to work with the new pub company if they get the lease and we are in contact with them, I have proposed a way they could team up with us to qualify for funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund so I really hope they will seriously consider it.

Fingers crossed people! :)

Join the working group!

After the meeting in the library last month we had some fantastic offers of help from interested people, all wanting to help push forward this very complex project. If you didn't manage to make it along to the meeting or if you've just found out about the project and would like to get involved then we are holding a meeting in the Barrel and Horn pub on High Street North in Bromley on the 23rd of April at 7pm.

It doesn't matter what your background or whether you think you have the skills to help, if you want to, you can! We're all new to this and all you need is the passion to breath life back into the Royal Bell Hotel and the desire to help help turn it into a fantastic pub, community hub and arts centre. No-one's saying it'll be easy but working together with like-minded Bromley people will give this project its best chance of success, so please do come along if you think you can help.

Do contact me if you have questions, amanda.c.hone@gmail.com, or just turn up, we can't wait to meet others who want to help with this important venture :)